A clash of two victimisms

As the popular movements continue to sweep the whole Arab World, the familiar rivalry continues between Israel and Iran.

This is not that arrived yesterday. When Israel first came into being, Israeli leader David Ben Gurion, in order to offset the Arab opposition and rejection of Israel, emphasized closer ties with major non-Arab peoples in the region. These included having generally good ties with Iran, Turkey and Ethiopia.

Both Iran and Turkey were under largely pro-Western regimes i.e. Turkey under the Kemalist elite and Iran under the jack boot of the Pahlavi dynasty.

Both regimes largely accommodated all major Western interests in the region. Keeping a distance away from Kremlin, being nice to Israel and particularly in the case of Iran the terms of vassalage meant selling cheap oil to its Western clients.

Yet it was the Iranians who were the first to opt out of this arrangement. When the Iranians booted out the Shah regime from power, it not only inaugurated a new political element in the region but ensured something very interesting in the region.

The Islamic republic of Iran wanted the acknowledgement of the West of its sovereignty.
It wanted to continue to sell her oil to the West but in its own terms. It also did not want to do anything with Israel which the Iranians considered to be oppressive and usurper of the rights of indigenous Palestinians.

Thus began the rivalry between Iran and Israel.

Two peoples, two unique victimhoods
Iran and Israel may have been at each other’s throats for last few decades yet these two nations’ current political systems have tremendous similarities between them in terms of their respective purposes and coming into beings.

Israel was born out of the crematoriums of the holocaust. The Zionist ideology was born out of a sense of fear of the European Jews who thought they will be assimilated into the culture of the Goyim West. It was the ideology of a people who long considered themselves victimized in perpetuity for who they were … “the chosen people of G_D” The struggle for Israel is thereby the struggle of a people who considers themselves eternal victims of the jealousy and hatred of others for their election by G_D.

The Islamic republic of Iran also considers itself a victim. Iranians consider themselves the victims of the greed of a materialistic Western civilization which wants to exploit Iran’s material resources on terms which are strictly unfavorable to Iran. The Islamic revolutionaries also consider believe the Iranian culture to be a victim of the promiscuous and permissive culture of the West.

History supports the views of Iranian Islamic revolutionaries. When Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized the Oil industry and kicked out the British oil interests, the first Iranian leader to do so, he was unceremoniously sacked in a coup inspired and financed by the USA and UK.

What followed was 26 years of brutal suppression of the Iranian people’s wish to be free and sovereign under the Shah regime, imposed and encouraged by the West. The Shah regime allowed Iranian women to show off their bodies to whoever they would like to, but took away the rights of the Iranian people to be free.

However the most important inspiration of the Islamic republic is the martyrdom of Imam Hussein at Karbala , a millennium ago. From that time, the followers of Imam Hussein take inspiration from the fact that Imam Hussein refused to bow down to the dictates of the tyrannical and illegitimate ruler Yezid.

The followers of Hussein from that very day consider death more preferable than bowing to the dictates of what they consider arrogant and tyrants.

The Islamic republic also considers itself another Hussein fighting for its sovereignty and that of other unfortunate people like the Palestinians against the arrogant and tyrannical West.

The Islamic republic knows the consequences of its non-compliance to the current international system brings in economic sanctions, cyber attacks like that of Stuxnet variety, sabotage of its infrastructure and even assassinations of some its best scientists.

Still it remains unafraid. Iran considers its right to have a nuclear program as befitting a sovereign people and is willing to fight for that right which the current international system wants to take away from it.

This is probably the reason the Iranians did not use chemical weapons against their Iraqi enemies despite having that option. Iran believed it was fighting another Yezid in Saddam who was using those very same Chemical weapons against Iran, supplied by the West. Iran considered Chemical weapons against the conventions of war and decided not to use it despite losing thousands to those weapons.

Similarly, the Iranian supreme leader continues to veto the option of building of the nuclear bombs despite having the option to do so when almost every security analyst in the World including some Israelis think they will be justified to do so.

The world awaits another Karbala.